BEYONWIZ DP-P2 HD PERSONAL VIDEO
RECORDER
Beyonwiz's upgrade of its own range-topping HD recorder has been trailed as the "world's most feature packed PVR". A good thing? Oh yes...
One question we receive frequently about pvrs is: 'Can I personally use them to record Foxtel?' And the answer is 'No', obviously. Or it has been so far.
Because the Beyonwiz DP-P2 high-definition PVR includes only that ability, the first to ever do this, we believe. With the new version, Beyonwiz has constructed in this ability as standard.
EQUIPMENT
DVRs have had a comparatively straightforward task in the recent past, and this has never contained a need to convert analogue video to digital. All they have had to do is record computer-style information on their computer-style hard-disk drives. Once that's done, no additional processing is required.
The higher PVRs even allow you to truly show the subtitles and select other audio streams that could also have been broadcast (the Beyonwiz DP-P2 definitely allows both of these).
Without compression, the hard disk's capacity would be consumed very fast (you'd be blessed to get eight-and-a-half hours of uncompressed standard definition video onto the 320GB hard drive supplied with the Beyonwiz DP-P2).
For external record, the unit appears to be great for closer to 200 hours! It could receive these analogue signals in the form of stereo sound and either composite video or S - Video. You choose between the latter two within the setup menu.
Besides this extra functionality, and also the increase within the hard-disk size from 200GB to 320GB, little has changed because the DPP1 version. The machine has twin high definition tuners, and will be offering the ability to record from both at the similar time, while in addition playing back a previous recording.
The Beyonwiz DP-P2 is full of several other capacities. It has two flash card slots on the leading (concealed, and also a USB outlet, under a fold down panel) so that it can display photographs from your digital camera's storage card. It can also use this socket, or the one in the back, to learn a wide variety of digital music or video files. In the event that you use any of these USB sockets to connect a hard disk, you can archive your recordings to it, enlarging the effective capacity of the unit's integral drive.
There's also an Ethernet port, so that the Beyonwiz DPP2 could be attached to a home computer network. When you do so, you can put it to use to play back media files (music ) from shared videos, photos and folders in your computer, or indeed from other Beyonwiz devices also on the network.
Finally, the Beyonwiz DP-P2 supports IceTV's electronic program guide (EPG), and 3 months' free subscription to IceTV is included with the component. Until recently, IceTV's primary function was supposed to supply a complete seven-day EPG to your Beyonwiz PVR on the internet. With this installed, choosing programs to record was simple. Now it is even easier, because IceTV furthermore provides its 'Interactive' service, through which you can program your recordings from any browser (including the iPhone -- see news panel p11). And rather than days and recording specific times, you can tell the machine to record named shows for you, and they'll be recorded regardless of when they appear.
FUNCTIONALITY
Setting up the DPP2 was simple. There's a good semi-auto function, as well as the usual autoscan for TELEVISION stations, enabling you to truly set a range of stations to scan. You might be able enough to save a fair bit of time, should you understand what these have been in your region.
The DPP2 functions as well and reliably as a PVR as did the DP P1, which will be to say, extremely reliably. The TV reception in the test area was strong; it simply wouldn't let me down. There was one bug together with the sound with my system: with 'Passthrough' picked for sound handling, MPEG2 sound is converted to PCM but Dolby Digital sound is delivered as an initial bitstream. Nevertheless the Dolby Digital sound tended to drop out, at the least when delivered around HDMI, so you will need to parallel the connector to your equipment with a digital audio one.
You still get well thought-out 'trick' playback modes, for example skipping around your file. There's also a range of other functions which have been fed gradually in to the Beyonwiz line as part of the organization's continuing firmware upgrade application. (Just Beyonwiz web site. the see the Message board on. For instance, a few months ago a fairly strong 'bookmark' attribute was included with the Beyonwiz variety by way of a free firmware upgrade.)
A very important factor that still has not changed is the poor video performance over HDMI with standard definition TV, due to the low quality deinterlacing the system supplies. That this is in accordance with virtually all other HD PVRs is really no reason not to have taken this opportunity, with the launch of a recent version, to provide decent performance.
Besides archiving old videos, the apparent usage of the external record capabilities of this unit is to timeshift Foxtel, sans the requirement use the Foxtel IQ. But I do not need Foxtel (nor any other Pay TELEVISION), so I used a DVD player, connected via analogue sound Video.
No selector for the AV input has been added to the remote control, but the 'List' key on the remote brings up an on-screen record of all available stations. At the base is a new station, 950, "A/V Input". Just keying in '950' on the remote control will take you there as well. The machine seems to take care of this external input the same as it-s internal tuners, not only in regards to listing it as just another station, but in addition with recording. In order to record one station as well as the AV input at the similar time, but while doing this you can't watch another station utilizing the spare TELEVISION tuner. You really do not get a choice about the 'quality' to use in the recordings. This came to about 435MB of quality, equal to a bit rate of around 3MB per second. That is towards the bottom of the range of bit rates that you see on DVDs.
That video segment included a reasonable number of movements, which can make demands on lossy compression systems. So I replicated the process with a static picture and that did not make a whole lot of difference, reducing the quantity of info by just.
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6%. Low Bit rates or not, the caliber of the record was superb. With one exception, there was no difference at all that I could see between the origin (delivered as S-Video, since that is what the Beyonwiz was recording) and the recording it self --- and that was examining the pictures critically on a big front projection screen using a total high definition projector. Black-and - as were colour and picture sharpness, white graduation was consistent. There were no visible artifacts. This was a remarkable performance for this new and practical record function. The sole issue, which might or may well really not worry you, was that the process somehow altered the aspect ratio of the first source slightly. The recorded video was exactly the same height as the initial, but not exactly as wide. In fact, it was 6% narrower.
Whether this will be noticable to you will likely rely on the software material. If Beyonwiz failed to fix this with a firmware upgrade in the near future I would be very surprised.
Beyonwiz's upgrade of its own range-topping HD recorder has been trailed as the "world's most feature packed PVR". A good thing? Oh yes...
One question we receive frequently about pvrs is: 'Can I personally use them to record Foxtel?' And the answer is 'No', obviously. Or it has been so far.
Because the Beyonwiz DP-P2 high-definition PVR includes only that ability, the first to ever do this, we believe. With the new version, Beyonwiz has constructed in this ability as standard.
EQUIPMENT
DVRs have had a comparatively straightforward task in the recent past, and this has never contained a need to convert analogue video to digital. All they have had to do is record computer-style information on their computer-style hard-disk drives. Once that's done, no additional processing is required.
The higher PVRs even allow you to truly show the subtitles and select other audio streams that could also have been broadcast (the Beyonwiz DP-P2 definitely allows both of these).
Without compression, the hard disk's capacity would be consumed very fast (you'd be blessed to get eight-and-a-half hours of uncompressed standard definition video onto the 320GB hard drive supplied with the Beyonwiz DP-P2).
For external record, the unit appears to be great for closer to 200 hours! It could receive these analogue signals in the form of stereo sound and either composite video or S - Video. You choose between the latter two within the setup menu.
Besides this extra functionality, and also the increase within the hard-disk size from 200GB to 320GB, little has changed because the DPP1 version. The machine has twin high definition tuners, and will be offering the ability to record from both at the similar time, while in addition playing back a previous recording.
The Beyonwiz DP-P2 is full of several other capacities. It has two flash card slots on the leading (concealed, and also a USB outlet, under a fold down panel) so that it can display photographs from your digital camera's storage card. It can also use this socket, or the one in the back, to learn a wide variety of digital music or video files. In the event that you use any of these USB sockets to connect a hard disk, you can archive your recordings to it, enlarging the effective capacity of the unit's integral drive.
There's also an Ethernet port, so that the Beyonwiz DPP2 could be attached to a home computer network. When you do so, you can put it to use to play back media files (music ) from shared videos, photos and folders in your computer, or indeed from other Beyonwiz devices also on the network.
Finally, the Beyonwiz DP-P2 supports IceTV's electronic program guide (EPG), and 3 months' free subscription to IceTV is included with the component. Until recently, IceTV's primary function was supposed to supply a complete seven-day EPG to your Beyonwiz PVR on the internet. With this installed, choosing programs to record was simple. Now it is even easier, because IceTV furthermore provides its 'Interactive' service, through which you can program your recordings from any browser (including the iPhone -- see news panel p11). And rather than days and recording specific times, you can tell the machine to record named shows for you, and they'll be recorded regardless of when they appear.
FUNCTIONALITY
Setting up the DPP2 was simple. There's a good semi-auto function, as well as the usual autoscan for TELEVISION stations, enabling you to truly set a range of stations to scan. You might be able enough to save a fair bit of time, should you understand what these have been in your region.
The DPP2 functions as well and reliably as a PVR as did the DP P1, which will be to say, extremely reliably. The TV reception in the test area was strong; it simply wouldn't let me down. There was one bug together with the sound with my system: with 'Passthrough' picked for sound handling, MPEG2 sound is converted to PCM but Dolby Digital sound is delivered as an initial bitstream. Nevertheless the Dolby Digital sound tended to drop out, at the least when delivered around HDMI, so you will need to parallel the connector to your equipment with a digital audio one.
You still get well thought-out 'trick' playback modes, for example skipping around your file. There's also a range of other functions which have been fed gradually in to the Beyonwiz line as part of the organization's continuing firmware upgrade application. (Just Beyonwiz web site. the see the Message board on. For instance, a few months ago a fairly strong 'bookmark' attribute was included with the Beyonwiz variety by way of a free firmware upgrade.)
A very important factor that still has not changed is the poor video performance over HDMI with standard definition TV, due to the low quality deinterlacing the system supplies. That this is in accordance with virtually all other HD PVRs is really no reason not to have taken this opportunity, with the launch of a recent version, to provide decent performance.
Besides archiving old videos, the apparent usage of the external record capabilities of this unit is to timeshift Foxtel, sans the requirement use the Foxtel IQ. But I do not need Foxtel (nor any other Pay TELEVISION), so I used a DVD player, connected via analogue sound Video.
No selector for the AV input has been added to the remote control, but the 'List' key on the remote brings up an on-screen record of all available stations. At the base is a new station, 950, "A/V Input". Just keying in '950' on the remote control will take you there as well. The machine seems to take care of this external input the same as it-s internal tuners, not only in regards to listing it as just another station, but in addition with recording. In order to record one station as well as the AV input at the similar time, but while doing this you can't watch another station utilizing the spare TELEVISION tuner. You really do not get a choice about the 'quality' to use in the recordings. This came to about 435MB of quality, equal to a bit rate of around 3MB per second. That is towards the bottom of the range of bit rates that you see on DVDs.
That video segment included a reasonable number of movements, which can make demands on lossy compression systems. So I replicated the process with a static picture and that did not make a whole lot of difference, reducing the quantity of info by just.
Take a look at here http://www.dealspace.com.au/
6%. Low Bit rates or not, the caliber of the record was superb. With one exception, there was no difference at all that I could see between the origin (delivered as S-Video, since that is what the Beyonwiz was recording) and the recording it self --- and that was examining the pictures critically on a big front projection screen using a total high definition projector. Black-and - as were colour and picture sharpness, white graduation was consistent. There were no visible artifacts. This was a remarkable performance for this new and practical record function. The sole issue, which might or may well really not worry you, was that the process somehow altered the aspect ratio of the first source slightly. The recorded video was exactly the same height as the initial, but not exactly as wide. In fact, it was 6% narrower.
Whether this will be noticable to you will likely rely on the software material. If Beyonwiz failed to fix this with a firmware upgrade in the near future I would be very surprised.